Feature: Training Wheels
August 1, 2005
Knuckles crack, pens click, and fingers drum tabletops on this sunny Monday morning, day one of the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving. The couple dozen students sitting in the air-conditioned classroom near Phoenix have grown fidgety, anticipating what the next few hours–and the next few days–will bring.
There is no typical Bondurant pupil. This group ranges from a high school
senior who enrolled so that he can follow in the footsteps of his father, a
professional racecar driver, to a Detroit adman who would like to learn how
stunt drivers practice their profession. A Z06 owner who just crashed his car
wants to avoid any more expensive mistakes. Some are here on friends’
recommendations. Two received their places in the class as gifts from their
wives. An Army captain, a driver and personal security guard to one of America’s
highest-ranking military officers, is brushing up on some of the skills he
learned in an antiterrorist course that he took several years ago. Fresh from
Iraq, he also may be here to unwind.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
When evasive maneuvers fail, students learn how to disable an
offending vehicle, paparazzi-style: Aim for the end that doesn’t have an
engine. (Click image to enlarge)
Of Bondurant’s one- to four-day courses–Intro to Racing, Highway Survival,
High Performance Driving, Grand Prix Road Racing, and Advanced Road Racing,
among others–the elective for which we have signed up, titled Executive
Protection, carries the highest tuition at $5,645. Despite the relatively
expensive fee (prices generally average $1,200 per day), demand for a course
that includes antiterrorist training has increased in recent years.
Regardless of their purpose for enrolling or their prior experience, all Bondurant students hone their driving skills by beginning with the basics. Proper braking, steering, and shifting techniques are standard lessons that are new for some and good review for others. These are followed by sessions that address driver smoothness, vehicle weight transfer, and skid control.
The instructors also spend time teaching all students how to look and think ahead–how you should point your eyes in the direction you want to go. “Your eyes tell your hands and feet what to do,” explains chief instructor Mike McGovern, “and by extension your eyes tell your car where to go.”
To those in Executive Protection training, instructor Will Parker assigns a bright orange Mustang GT for use in basic and advanced training. While driving laps around an oval, students practice cornering lines and trail braking, which is the habit of extending braking into corners to keep the front tires weighted for better traction. Students also rehearse steering while emergency braking, a feat made simpler by modern antilock braking systems, or ABS. Bondurant claims that ABS stands for the “Ability to Brake and Steer,” because such systems enable drivers to apply full brake pressure while steering around an obstacle.
Next come the “accident simulator” and “skid car” lessons. The former takes place on a coned-off, three-lane highway with green lights above each lane. As the driver approaches the lights, two of the three turn red, simulating a sudden roadblock. The trick is to “lift, turn, and squeeze”–lift your foot off the gas pedal, turn quickly into the open lane, then straighten the car and squeeze back on the gas to stabilize. The drill is designed to teach the potentially lifesaving practice of finding an opening and driving through it rather than jamming on the brakes and skidding into the obstacle.
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